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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Helen McCloy : Through a Glass, Darkly (1950)

Some novels I read in a single blow, putting one or two days, and there are others that takes me a bit more time: I read this in a longer time than other
equally challenging.The
thing may seem a pseudo-problem, because it related to
subjectivity; in reality its importance has it: the length of the reading of
this novel, in my opinion is related to the expectation that you can have. If
you read it, like any novel, there is already half a disappointment, because
the space before the first offense is too long, if you read it as a
supernatural thriller it can be very charming; if,
finally, you read it, as in my case, because it has been lauded by the great
critics of the "Looked Room", the attitude of reading oscillates
between love and hate.Because,
now, after reading it, and re-reading it a second time to be more secure, I didn't figure it to be called a Locked Room.Through
a Glass, Darkly (1950) was written by Helen McCloy, from a short
story she had written two years before,“Through
a Glass Darkly”, published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in
September 1948. She is called by
many critics the greatest woman writer of detective genre in America: in addition
to this novel, that is her most famous, Helen McCloy who was also married to hard-boiled
writer
Brett Halliday, creator of private detective Mike Shayne, wrote other novels always
with his main character, the psychiatrist Basil Willing, including his other
masterpiece novel Mr. Splitfoot
(1968).In
several novels, McCloy addresses the issue of the crime impossible, for example
in
Mr. Splitfoot: Mr. Splitfoot is
another name for Satan define (the charade is explanatory). It
seems curious note that a character at Through
a Glass, Darkly , the object of our analysis, the Director of the School Brereton, is called Mrs. "Lightfoot", as
the later "Splitfoot" used elsewhere: the common denominator may be
the supernatural call, which can be
attributed to the characters in question. In
fact, Mrs. Lightfoot is one of the people who claims as Miss Faustina Crayle,
the hapless protagonist of the novel, was persecuted by his double if not the
evoked with his feelings.This
Faustina is a teacher very unfortunate, because where she is teaching, tends to
obscure events occur, i.e. her inexplicable dislocations in different places,
in front of witnesses, who swear that while Faustina was engaged to paint, her
dual sat elsewhere before their
sight aghast. In
fact, the origin of the double, the “Doppelganger”, can be attributed to the
belief that they experience near death of a person, and that was a
manifestation of supernatural origin.

This kind of
ghost, which creates an aura of mystery, terror, suspicion, and slander about
Faustina, real or perceived, means that she has to change seat of learning
frequently. Until
something happens that is not properly connected to the supernatural: Alice
Aitchinson dies, a student who hated Faustina. She
dies, breaking his neck, falling down a stairway.Someone
swears he saw Faustina just before the Aitchinson fall, but this is not
possible, because in the meantime Faustina is miles away. It’s this a Locked Room? It
is because the murderess some persons say they looked her from a distance, she would
seem to be evaporated? I do not know. It
is certain that this does not seem a "Locked Room" in the strict
sense, as there are the qualities that make it impossible to crime, except that
the murderess seems to have split in two different places. But
what we will see, invests more the sphere of the supernatural or would-be than
anything else.Accidental death? Suicide or something? It
'obvious that slander now reach the summit, so much so that Basil Willing, the
boyfriend of Gisela von Hohenems, a colleague of Faustina, encouraged as a
psychiatrist to deal with such events para-psychic, feels the need to defend
Faustina. Until
that even Faustina died in a way that frees the murderess, if he was stopped, from
any possible accusation against him: Faustina injured, nothing that can connect
to an assault or act of violence.She
died for a heart attack, and it is Gisela find her, on a dark night in the
cottage where Faustina was going to stay. A
cottage that belonged to the mother of Faustina, Pink Diamond, a famous
maintained high board, and before that it had belonged to one of his lovers.

The testament of
Rose, entrusted to his legatee, says if Faustina were to die, the jewelry that
her mother has given to daughter would be returned to their rightful owners
(heirs of those who had donated to her at the time) even if there were , otherwise would be added to
the rest. In
short, a good motive to kill her. Why, if she died for a heart attack?Here,
too, I do not really think that there’s a Locked Room: Faustina opens the door
and sees that the lighting does not work out so he needs to look for a light
switch: she leaves her luggage at the door, which remains open and she enters. The
taxi driver who took her home, says that in practice he did not see anyone
leave, since the house was in his view until he put back into the path of the
forest from which he came, but in the opposite direction. However,
the murderess could have been dressed in black, and take advantage of the dark
to avoid being seen. Not only. Gisela
takes time to get to the cottage, time that could be used in case the killer
was there, simply disappearing. But
beyond that, Gisela, who is going to Faustina, invests almost a figure in the
woods, revealing for a moment, in front of his eyes terrified, Faustina: how
could she be there at that time, if the coroner says she was already dead in the house?Basil
Willing demonstrate that the Doppelganger was not really but…of a different
nature. If it there wasn’t a Locked Room,
however, it should be a novel about the supernatural. And
the method used by the killer to kill, to induce the player to have a heart attack,
is the fear: fear of something ancestral, fear of his double, fear of death.

The death,
"Der Tod" in German, introduced by male article because he was
represented by a knight with scythe, on a black horse, appears in many poems, when
the man is about to pass away. The
fear of Faustina to see herself, her Doppelganger,
could be related to the fear of being about to die, what then happens. Moreover,
the Doppelganger is attested in many literary texts and in the tradition of
Central European countries, as a figure appeared, which could be seen only on
the bias, with one eye, only near death.Now
the title of the novel, can have a triple meaning: it may allude to the verse
of St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12: "..
βλεπομεν γαρ αρτι δι εσοπτρου εν αινιγματι ", "For now we see through a
glass, darkly"; it could allude, in my opinion, the way to commit the
second murder: ".. as in a mirror, in the dark." The protagonist was
led to see
herself, since the murderer has built, based on the absence of light, a mirror,
transforming a large glass door, with doors opening at the center of the room, in
a craft but tremendously effective mirror.And
it could finally reconnect the eponymous anthology of short stories of the
great novelist and Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: In a Glass Darkly, in which Dr. Martin Hesselius investigates cases
the limit of the paranormal and can be found in references to the theme of
Doppelganger : for example in
The Familiar, version of the story
appeared in The Watcher in the
previous collection Ghost Stories and
Tales of Mystery (1851), and in Mr
Justice Harbottle. Dr.
Hesselius, this singular figure of detective before his time, paid to the
paranormal, will also make Dr. Fell by John Dickson Carr, if not Colonel March always
by Carr.Through
a Glass, Darkly, rather than being another, is a novel that mixes very
cleverly and intelligently elements of thriller and the supernatural. It
's very close to or even tributary of The
Burning Court by John Dickson Carr which is today still the best example of
the mixture of supernatural and crime stories, so as to be taken as an object
as an example of fantastic literature (besides Helen McCloy dedicated to Carr
and his wife Clarice, her novel Alias ​​Basil
Willing).In
this, the novel McCloy, is really built in a wonderful way, and that is
tributary to the Carr's novel, it shows the ending very cleverly alludes to
Carr with his double hypothesis: the rational, built by Willing at the expense
of killer; the irrational at which the killer, as
long as he is the killer of course, will never be accused by any court for the
murder happened while he was away: he is accused by Willing only on the basis
of a series of clues, very skillfully stuck. However,
they are clues, no courts : on these an English-speaking country could put on
trial him.

He knows it and Willing
knows it, although Basil Willing would expect at least on that occasion, an
admission that at least, if it had not the merit of bringing to life Faustina,
may clear the field of any supernatural dispute

Personal Informations

I am Italian. Once I was reporter, of classical music. Since several years I collaborate with "Il Blog del Giallo Mondadori".
I wrote a lot of stories ( 1 Locked Room Novel also and 1 Locked Room
long tale, both not yet published) almost all "Locked Rooms", readable
on Sherlock Magazine Web site, among which Queen and Rawson apocryphal,
while 3 S.Holmes apocryphal have been published in paper form.
I wrote essays about E.Queen, R.King, Carr, Berkeley, Aveline,
E.d'Errico, S.S.Van Dine, N.Marsh, C.Brand, A.Christie, M.Allingham,
etc..on the blogs: "Il Giallo Mondadori", "La Morte Sa Leggere", and on
sites web: "Sherlock Holmes Magazine" and "EuroPolar".
On italian Mondadori's Blog Giallo, I wrote a history of Locked-Room
Lectures in three parts ( a fourth part is in preparation). Coming soon a my new short story, a classical locked room, will be published from an important american publishing house.I own five blogs about Crime fiction (3 at italian language and 2 at english language) and 1 of Classical Music.